Page:The Land of the Veda.djvu/456

446 him to turn to God in penitence, and seek pardon through the Lord Jesus, who died for him and for all sinners. This was done in a very kind manner by Brother Humphrey, and I hoped the old man would have been impressed by it; but his Mohammedan bigotry rose up bitterly against the Saviour's atonement, and he would not admit his necessity of any such help. The Koran was enough; he wanted nothing more, and wished to hear nothing else.

I saw him tried before two judges. He was defended by a native lawyer, who managed the sad case as well as he could. Mr. Moens, an English magistrate, prosecuted. The old Nawab's policy was to deny every charge, but any number of native witnesses were ready to come forward and prove them. On the afternoon of the second or third day the trial was closed in connection with a singular forgetfulness of his. A witness on the stand was testifying to the color of the robes which Khan Bahadur wore on the day when he witnessed the exposure of the bodies of the murdered English people at the Kotwalie. The old man had denied that he was there at all, but, forgetting himself in his rage against the witness, who swore it was a blue dress he had on, Khan Bahadur turned to him and said, “You lie, you rascal! it was not blue, it was a green dress that I wore.” The look of blank astonishment that came over the face of the native lawyer at his client's acknowledgment was a study, while Mr. Moens turned toward the judges and merely remarked, “Your honors hear the admission of the prisoner.” The trial closed that afternoon. He was condemned to be hanged at the Kotwalie. He passed me on his way to execution in a cart, sitting on his coffin, with a guard of the 42d Highlanders around him, lest the Mohammedans should interpose any trouble; but they attempted none; there seemed to be among the natives a general acquiescence in his doom, as one that had been fully deserved.

A medical friend went down to see him executed. On his return he told me what had occurred, remarking, “I had some sympathy for the old man, but his wicked utterance at the close took it all away.” The facts were these: when Khan Bahadur